Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century

by Ignatius Donnelly

condemned, of whom printedcatalogues had been furnished the officers. The shouts, the yells,the delight were appalling.

  Now and then some poor wretch, whose sole offense was that he waswell-dressed, would take fright and start to run, and then, likehounds after a rabbit, they would follow in full cry; and when he wascaught a hundred men would struggle to strike him, and he woulddisappear in a vortex of arms, clubs and bayonets, literally torn topieces.

  A sullen roar filled the air as this human cyclone moved onward,leaving only wrecks behind it. Now it pauses at a house. The captainconsults his catalogue. "This is it," he cries; and doors and windowsgive way before the thunderous mob; and then the scenes are terrible.Men are flung headlong, alive, out of the windows to the ravenouswretches below; now a dead body comes whirling down; then theterrified inhabitants fly to the roofs, and are pursued from house tohouse and butchered in sight of the delighted spectators. But whenthe condemned man--the head of the house--is at last found, hiddenperhaps in some coal-hole or cellar, and is brought up, black withdust, and wild with terror, his clothes half torn from his back; andhe is thrust forth, out of door or window, into the claws of the wildbeasts, the very heavens ring with acclamations of delight; and happyis the man who can reach over his fellows and know that he has struckthe victim.

  Then up and away for another vengeance. Before them is solitude;shops and stores and residences are closed and barricaded; in thedistance teams are seen flying and men scurrying to shelter; andthrough crevices in shutters the horrified people peer at the mob, asat an invasion of barbarians.

  Behind them are dust, confusion, dead bodies, hammered and beaten outof all semblance of humanity; and, worse than all, the criminalclasses--that wretched and inexplicable residuum, who have nogrievance against the world except their own existence--the base, thecowardly, the cruel, the sneaking, the inhuman, the horrible! Theseflock like jackals in the track of the lions. They rob the deadbodies; they break into houses; they kill if they are resisted; theyfill their pockets. Their joy is unbounded. Elysium has descendedupon earth for them this day. Pickpockets, sneak-thieves,confidence-men, burglars, robbers, assassins, the refuse andoutpouring of grog-shops and brothels, all are here. And women,too--or creatures that pass for such--having the bodies of women andthe habits of ruffians;--harpies--all claws and teeth andgreed--bold--desperate--shameless--incapable of good. They, too, arehere. They dart hither and thither; they swarm--they dance--theyhowl--they chatter--they quarrel and battle, like carrion-vultures,over the spoils.

  Civilization is gone, and all the devils are loose! No more courts,nor judges, nor constables, nor prisons! That which it took the worldten thousand years to create has gone in an hour.

  And still the thunderous cyclones move on through a hundred streets.Occasionally a house is fired; but this is not part of the programme,for they have decided to keep all these fine residences forthemselves! They will be rich. They will do no more work. The richman's daughters shall be their handmaidens; they will wear his purpleand fine linen.

  But now and then the flames rise up--perhaps a thief kindles theblaze--and it burns and burns; for who would leave the glorious workto put it out? It burns until the streets stop it and the block isconsumed. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there is no wind to breed ageneral conflagration. The storms to-day are all on earth; and thepowers of the air are looking down with hushed breath, horrified atthe exceeding wickedness of the little crawlers on the planet we callmen.

  They do not, as a rule, steal. Revenge--revenge--is all theirthought. And why should they steal? Is it not all their own? Now andthen a too audacious thief is caught and stuck full of bayonets; orhe is flung out of a window, and dies at the hands of the mob thedeath of the honest man for whom he is mistaken; and thus, by ahorrible travesty of fate, he perishes for that which he never wasnor could be.

  Think of the disgust of a thief who finds himself being murdered foran honest man, an aristocrat, and can get no one to believe hisasseverations that he is simply and truly a thief--and nothing more!It is enough to make Death grin!

  The rude and begrimed insurgents are raised by their terriblepurposes to a certain dignity. They are the avengers of time--theGod-sent--the righters of the world's wrongs--the punishers of theineffably wicked. They do not mean to destroy the world; they willreform it--redeem it. They will make it a world where there shall beneither toil nor oppression. But, poor fellows! their arms are morepotent for evil than their brains for good. They are omnipotent todestroy; they are powerless to create.

  But still the work of ruin and slaughter goes on. The mighty city,with its ten million inhabitants, lies prostrate, chained, helpless,at the mercy of the enraged _canaille_. The dogs have become lions.

  The people cannot comprehend it. They look around for theirdefenders--the police, the soldiery. "Where are they? Will not thisdreadful nightmare pass away?" No; no; never--never. This is theculmination--this is the climax--"the century's aloe flowers to-day."These are "the grapes of wrath" which God has stored up for the dayof his vengeance; and now he is trampling them out, and this is thered juice--look you!--that flows so thick and fast in the verygutters.

  You were blind, you were callous, you were indifferent to the sorrowsof your kind. The cry of the poor did not touch you, and everypitiful appeal wrung from human souls, every groan and sob and shriekof men and women, and the little starving children--starving in bodyand starving in brain--rose up and gathered like a great cloud aroundthe throne of God; and now, at last, in the fullness of time, it hasburst and comes down upon your wretched heads, a storm ofthunderbolts and blood.

  You had money, you had power, you had leisure, you had intelligence,you possessed the earth; all things were possible unto you. Did yousay to one another: "These poor souls are our brethren. For themChrist died on Calvary. What can we do to make their lives bright andhappy?" No; no; you cried out, "'On with the dance!' Let them go downinto the bottomless pit!"

  And you smiled and said to one another, in the words of the firstmurderer, when he lied to God: "Am I my brother's keeper?" Nay, yousaid further to one another, "There is no God!" For you thought, ifthere was one, surely He would not permit the injustice manifest inthe world. But, lo! He is here. Did you think to escape him? Did youthink the great Father of Cause and Effect--the All-knowing, theuniverse-building God,--would pass you by?

  As you sowed, so must you reap. Evil has but one child--Death! Forhundreds of years you have nursed and nurtured Evil. Do you complainif her monstrous progeny is here now, with sword and torch? What elsedid you expect? Did you think she would breed angels?

  Your ancestors, more than two centuries ago, established andpermitted Slavery. What was the cry of the bondman to them? What thesobs of the mother torn from her child--the wife from her husband--onthe auction block? Who among them cared for the lacerated bodies, theshameful and hopeless lives? They were merry; they sang and theydanced; and they said, "Gods sleeps."

  But a day came when there was a corpse at every fireside. And not thecorpse of the black stranger--the African--the slave;--but thecorpses of fair, bright-faced men; their cultured, their manly, theirnoble, their best-loved. And, North and South, they sat, rockingthemselves to and fro, in the midst of the shards and ashes ofdesolation, crying aloud for the lives that would come back to blessthem never, nevermore.

  God wipes out injustice with suffering; wrong with blood; sin withdeath. You can no more get beyond the reach of His hand than you canescape from the planet.

  CHAPTER XXXIV.

  THE PRINCE GIVES HIS LAST BRIBE

  But it was when the mob reached the wealthier parts of the city thatthe horrors of the devastation really began. Here almost every grandhouse was the abode of one of the condemned. True, many of them hadfled. But the cunning cripple--the vice-president--had provided forthis too. At the railroad stations, at the bridges and ferries, evenon the yachts of the princes, men were stationed who would recognizeand seize them; and if they even escaped
the dangers of the suburbs,and reached the country, there they found armed bands of desperatepeasants, ranging about, slaying every one who did not bear on hisface and person the traces of the same wretchedness which theythemselves had so long endured. Nearly every rich man had, in his ownhousehold and among his own servants, some bitter foe, who hated him,and who had waited for this terrible day and followed him to thedeath.

  The Prince of Cabano, through his innumerable spies, had earlyreceived word of the turn affairs had taken. He had hurriedly filleda large satchel with diamonds and other jewels of great value, and,slinging it over his shoulders, and arming himself with sword, knifeand pistols, he had called Frederika to him (he had really somelittle love for his handsome concubine), and loading her pockets andhis own with gold pieces, and taking her by the hand, he had fled ingreat terror to the river side. His fine yacht lay off in the stream.He called and shouted until he was